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Stephen Harper heads northward again — with stakes higher than ever

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is welcomed by summer camp kids as he arrives in Hay River, Northwest Territories on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen make their way across the Miles Canyon suspension bridge over the Yukon River in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen depart Calgary on route to Whitehorse, Yukon on Sunday, August 18, 2013. Harper will spend the next week on a northern tour of Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is greeted by a group of Canadian Rangers as he arrives in Whitehorse, Yukon on Sunday, August 18, 2013.Whitehorse is Harper's first stop on his annual northern Canada tour. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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A young child waves at Prime Minister Stephen Harper as he is greeted by locals upon his arrivial in Whitehorse, Yukon on Sunday, August 18, 2013. Whitehorse is Harper's first stop on his annual northern Canada tour. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper shakes hands with a young Girls Guide as he is greeted by locals upon his arrival in Whitehorse, Yukon on Sunday, August 18, 2013. Whitehorse is Harper's first stop on his annual northern Canada tour. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is greeted by locals as he arrives in Whitehorse, Yukon on Sunday, August 18, 2013., Whitehorse is Harper's first stop on his annual northern Canada tour.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivers a statement at Quantum Machine Works Ltd., in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013. HE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper answers questions following a statement in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen hike along the edge of Miles Canyon on the Yukon River in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen make their way across the Miles Canyon suspension bridge over the Yukon River in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen hike along the edge of Miles Canyon on the Yukon River in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen take part in a picnic lunch overlooking Miles Canyon on the Yukon River in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen make their way across the Miles Canyon suspension bridge over the Yukon River in Whitehorse on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper poses for a photo on the tailgate of a Hercules aircraft with summer camp kids as he arrives in Hay River, Northwest Territories on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is welcomed by summer camp kids as he arrives in Hay River, Northwest Territories on Monday, August 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepts a Inuit wall hanging as he takes part in a community event in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Wednesday, August 21, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper is greeted by a group of Canadian Rangers as he arrives in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Tuesday, August 20, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Prime Minister Stephen Harper shoots a .303 Lee Enfield rifle while taking part in demonstration from Canadian Rangers near the Artic community of Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Tuesday, August 20, 2013THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of Defence Rob Nicholson shoot .303 Lee Enfield rifle's while taking part in demonstration from Canadian Rangers near the Artic community of Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Tuesday, August 20, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen enjoy a bonfire at a Canadian Rangers camp near Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Tuesday, August 20, 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper wears the Canadian Ranger sweater after he was bestowed honorary Canadian Ranger status in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Wednesday, August 21, 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper wears the Canadian Ranger sweater after he was bestowed honorary Canadian Ranger status near Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Wednesday, August 21, 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper wears the Canadian Ranger sweater after he was bestowed honorary Canadian Ranger status near Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Wednesday, August 21, 2013., as he stands with a group of Canadian Rangers and Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Tom Lawson, bottom left.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcomes Private Nigel Nakoolak, from Coral Harbour, Nunavut, as the 5000th Canadian Ranger during a ceremony in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Wednesday, August 21, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper watches two Inuit throat singers as he takes part in a community event in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut on Wednesday, August 21, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

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Gjoa Haven, Nunavut - Prime Minister Stephen Harper participates in a round of target practice with members of the Canadian Rangers

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Gjoa Haven, NU - Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment, and Bernard Valcourt, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development enjoy a community event at a local Elementary School

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Gjoa Haven, Nunavut - Prime Minister Stephen Harper participates in OP NANOOK 13 with members of the Canadian Rangers

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Gjoa Haven, Nunavut - Prime Minister Stephen Harper participates in OP NANOOK 13 with members of the Canadian Rangers

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Gjoa Haven, NU - Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Rob Nicholson, Minister of National Defence, participate in a boat patrol with members of the Canadian Rangers

OTTAWA – He will be accused of indulging in photo-op theatrics, of fleeing Ottawa’s scandals, or just of taking an expensive working holiday at taxpayers’ expense. Such is the lot of a third-term prime minister headed north on his eighth consecutive annual Arctic summer tour.

The irony is that this year, perhaps more than at any time previously, Prime Minister Stephen Harper can legitimately claim that the true north — strong, free and vastly wealthy in natural resources — is central to his government’s agenda. Indeed, it can be argued that, as Harper’s northern strategy goes, so will go his legacy.

This year’s Arctic swing, in keeping with the now well-established pattern, will take the PM to Whitehorse, in the Yukon, via Calgary, on Sunday. Monday he is to visit Hay River, in the Northwest Territories. The next day he’ll venture north of the Arctic Circle to Gjoa Haven on King William Island, in Nunavut. The remote harbour famously provided refuge to polar explorer Roald Amundsen during his first attempted crossing of the Northwest Passage in 1903.

Wednesday the prime minister flies to Rankin Inlet, on the northwest shores of Hudson Bay. He’ll make a final stop Thursday at Raglan Mine, a nickel-mining complex near Quebec’s northernmost geographic point, before returning to Ottawa Friday.

As in previous years the PMO is touting this trip as an articulation of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, and the Conservative government’s commitment to northern economic development. “The North is a fundamental part of our Canadian Heritage, our national identity and is vital to our country’s future prosperity,” Harper’s outgoing communications director, Andrew MacDougall, said in a statement Friday.

Harper will be accompanied by three cabinet ministers — Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt, and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. Defence Minister Rob Nicholson will join them for the Gjoa Haven segment, which is to feature the Canadian Rangers’ annual Operation Nanook military exercise.

The Conservatives’ emphasis on the Far North dates back to the Christmas campaign of 2005 when Arctic Sovereignty formed a key plank in the Canada First Defence Strategy. Since then, Harper has annually renewed a set of promises for the Far North — including the planned construction of a new three-season Coast Guard ice breaker, the John G. Diefenbaker; a planned fleet of between six and eight new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships; and a planned $200 million Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Construction of an all-season road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk began earlier this year, the PMO said Friday.

The difficulty, as the government has discovered, is that very little happens on schedule in the Arctic, and nothing ever does in the building of ships. The icebreaker and the research station are both due to be inaugurated in 2017. In March of this year, Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding received the first contracts for design of the Arctic patrol vessels. None of these big-ticket promises will come even close to fruition before the Conservatives face voters again in 2015.

Perhaps partly for that reason, the focus of the PMO’s messaging about the Arctic, beginning in 2012, shifted decidedly towards economics. Though Harper’s patriotic fervor about the Land of the Midnight Sun appears heartfelt – these trips are among the only occasions on which he has allowed himself to wax something close to poetic – he is far more likely to stress jobs, growth and resource development this year than the romance of the Maple Leaf fluttering over the Northwest Passage.

That’s because the government considers so-called “extractive” industries — mining and energy development, primarily — to hold the key to future Canadian prosperity, nationwide. In the wake of last winter’s Idle No More aboriginal protest movement, and with northern resource industries hampered by a skills shortage that only stands to grow more acute, there’s new urgency to the problem. Harper’s hope, people familiar with his thinking say, is that northern economic development can be a kind of policy silver bullet, able to mitigate several problems simultaneously.

The strategy, reflected in the 2013 federal budget, is to deploy funding for skills training, for any aboriginal band that is willing to engage, with a view to making remote northern communities partners in development, while at the same time improving living standards by providing well-paying jobs. Among other social ills, Nunavut suffers a suicide rate that is a staggering 11 times the national average. Residents of the Far North also face a cost of living far higher than that enjoyed by southern Canadians.

This is the nub of the northern opportunity, then, for a prime minister on the down-slope toward a decade in office. If he can show measurable gains in northern skills training and employment by 2015, and if northerners are willing to give him credit for such gains, he can argue that his model of economic development can work – not just for the country as a whole, but for its most disadvantaged citizens.

That would be a political plum, one would think, more than worth the annual treks above the tree line.

I am a national political columnist for Postmedia News. My work appears in the National Post, on Canada.com, the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Halifax Chronicle-Herald... read more and Vancouver Sun, among other publications. I write primarily about national politics and policy.View author's profile